Why do people share news online?

A study from the University of Pennsylvania has found that

1.articles with positive rather than negative themes.

2.long articles on intellectually challenging topics and

3.articles that inspired awe.

are the way to get your articles shared.

They looked at 7,500 articles published in the the New York Times over a period of six months and found that social transmission,word of mouth and social epidemics are the key drivers of sharing.

According to Dr Berger a social psychologist and a professor of marketing at Penn’s Wharton School.

“It involves the opening and broadening of the mind.Seeing the Grand Canyon, standing in front of a beautiful piece of art, hearing a grand theory or listening to a beautiful symphony may all inspire awe. So may the revelation of something profound and important in something you may have once seen as ordinary or routine, or seeing a causal connection between important things and seemingly remote causes.”

Pew report on the coverage of Jackson's death

More research on the coverage of news comes from the Pew Institute which has looked at the media coverage of Michael Jackson's death in America.

The study concluded that

The public closely tracked the sudden death of pop superstar Michael Jackson last week, though nearly two-in-three Americans say news organizations gave too much coverage to the story. At the same time, half say the media struck the right balance between reporting on Jackson’s musical legacy and the problems in his personal life.

In terms of the time given over to the story

About two-thirds of the public (64%) said news organizations gave too much attention to the death of the 50-year-old performer,. About three-in-ten (29%) say the coverage was the right amount. Only 3% say there had been too little coverage.

Is the media over hyping the Swine Flu epidemic Part 2

Charlie Beckett over his Director's blog puts up a smart defence of the media's reporting over the last few days.

it is also the job of journalists to rush to where potential stories break. I would rather an over-eager media than a complacent press corps. Our job is to be the canary in the coal-mine, the first draft of history. We need to be much better at understanding and explaining risk, but it is hardly an exact science. While the experts argue, it is the journalists job to dig and to question.

Al Jazeera critical of media coverage of Gaza

Journalism.co.uk hosted an online interview with Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin at the end of last week and was rather critical of the Western Media's coverage of the conflict in Palestine.

"The western media has failed tremendously in covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict accurately and contextually.

adding that

"They would not tolerate what has continued for decades and now what is happening in Gaza. I am extremely frustrated by how Gaza and the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict is portrayed, in the western world particularly,"

Sherine Tadros went further and said that

"I think it comes down to finance and editorial judgement," Tadros said. "Unless there is a military operation - i.e a sexy picture - editors won't spend on deploying teams to cover humanitarian tragedies.

Tomorrow's chip wrappers

A term often applied to the Daily paper's life although it has been a long time since fish and chips were wrapped in newspaper.

Anyway this post from the Long Now Foundation launches what it calls the Long News story

Each weekday, The New York Times prints around 125 news stories. That’s just one newspaper; add in all other newspapers, plus television, radio, and the internet, and it’s clear thousands upon thousands of news stories are generated every day.
But how many of these stories will make a difference next year? A decade from now? A century? Ten thousand years?

Death at sea-contrasting news values

Robin Lustig makes a good analysis of our news values culture over at the World tonight blog

Sixteen families are grieving in Scotland today, after a helicopter carrying oil rig workers crashed into the sea yesterday and all on board were feared lost.
Just a few days earlier, in the Mediterranean, more than 200 people - perhaps more than 300 -- are feared to have drowned. More than 100 bodies have already been recovered. But you very possibly never heard about it.
They were African migrants, on their way in grossly overloaded rubber dinghies from the coast of Libya, heading for Europe. We don't know their names; their families will probably never know for sure what happened to them.

Tales of far distant warzones

Times correspondent Anthony Loyd will not be covering the "popular war zones in the next 18 months but instead will be covering those areas that get less coverage

what of the rest of the world's conflicts? What of the thousands killed in Mexico's drug cartel battles or the fighting in Pakistan's remote tribal areas?

Hats off to the paper which will be sending and funding this 18 month series.

I look forwards to reading it

Hat Tip Frontline blogger

Are Ant and Dec more frightening than the Taliban?

If you haven't read it yet go and read Sean Langan's piece in the Guardian.

It is a sad insight into a certain sector in the media emphisis on news values and perhaps a sad reflection on society

He compares the trials and tribulations of the celebritities in the jungle with the real life hardships of being kidnapped by the Taliban

It's easy to mock the seemingly endless supply of second-rate celebrities in Britain today. But as I watched Nicola McLean, a former glamour model with fake breasts, talking about the harsh realities of life in the jungle on this week's I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, I realised that perhaps I was wrong.

says Sean but

Maybe I shouldn't laugh, I thought. Not after what she's been through. It sounds just like what I went through earlier this year, after I was kidnapped by the Taliban and locked in a dark room for three months; even the pain she felt at being separated from her child reminded me of the torments I was forced to endure. Maybe I should take celebrities and their suffering more seriously

For the media he points out her ordeal was on the par with the people arriving back from Mumbai and he remembers

On my return from Iraq in March 2004, I was surprised to discover that the fighting in Fallujah wasn't the big news. The front page story in the Observer on the day of my arrival was about who had won some new reality TV show called I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! Within a few days, I quickly realised that no one I met in London seemed to care, or even know much, about the war in Iraq.

Lustig on our international news values

A good piece by the BBC's Robin Lustig who takes a look at journalism's new values over at his excellent blog

We journalists are good at reporting sudden events. We're good at surprises, the bigger the better. We call them "news".
We're not so good at things that happen slowly, or over a long period of time. We're also not very good at things that happen in places that are dangerous or difficult to reach, where there's no reliable power supply to recharge our cameras, mobile phones and satellite transmission equipment. In other words, we're much better in big modern cities

He is referring in particular to coverage of Zimbabwe and DRC ongoing crises that have claimed many lives but doesn't necessarily take the headlines

(Interestingly as I type this Zimbabwe is the first story on Radio 4's PM-Maybe someone at the BEEB is listening to Lustig)

Back to Robin who points out that in the five major terrorist attacks starting with 9/11 and ending in Mumbai,around 3,500 people died whereas

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, on the other hand, an estimated five million people have died as a direct and indirect result of conflict. In Darfur, an estimated 200,000 people have died. In Zimbabwe, we don't even have an estimate

Just how long will Congo stay in the headlines?

Over at Untold stories(via FrontLine blog),Janeen Heath argues for keeping the news about Congo in the headlines.

It is an interesting point.The media coverage of the crisis has been particually good in the quality press in the UK and apart from the three days when we were saturated by the US elections coverage has been fairly comprehensive.

However she argues that

But space for international news coverage is really hard to come by these days. Just 5% of cable television's news hole is dedicated to international coverage; 9% for network television and 12% for newspapers (2007 Project for Excellence in Journalism). Soon, like most underreported international news stories, we will see Congo coverage beat out for other breaking news.

How the New York Times reports the world

A study by Gene expression has taken a look at how the New York Times covers different countries.

The analysis used the number of articles rather than column inches.Some expected but also some strange results from the study.

This is what the author says

But there are some funny ones at the top. For example, it takes the top 9 to discover all 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council. The remainder of the top 9 are Germany and Japan -- which at least are G8 countries -- but also Iraq and Israel. Speaking of the G8, it takes the top 12 to discover them, which adds another lesser country to this elite list -- Mexico (China is not G8 but is still important). Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan also rank pretty high.
This is a perfectly rational outcome -- our foreign policy may obsess over these places, but by placing criteria on them like "permanent member of UN Security Council" or "member of G8," we can see which ones don't deserve the attention. They represent the parts of the world, like Iraq, where we're wasting a bunch of money to squat over an over-glorified sandbox, hoping that our colonial piss will transform it into a lush oasis. Or they're the places, like Mexico, where we're importing a large illiterate peasant underclass from. This seems like a useful way to change our foreign policy: see who we're obsessed with, but who don't really matter, and cut them loose (relatively speaking).

Forget Brand-what about other threatened species?

If you thought that here in the UK the media have been far too obsessed with the Andrew Sachs,Brand and Ross affair,it seems that other countries media also focus on the wrong issues.

Over at Newswatch India they report that

The release of the IUCN Red List (of threatened species) in Barcelona, Spain earlier this month generated only 35 news stories across Indian news outlets. The arrest of 230-odd people at a rave party in Mumbai (which happened on the same day, October 6) generated 93 stories in the first two days of the incident alone.
Most news establishments also failed to present the issue of species extinction in the Indian context. There were only three distinct news items which could be seen as India-centric stories by Indian news outlets. The Press Trust of India (PTI) story about 49 mammals facing grave threats of extinction was carried by three news outlets. The Hindu (republished by Zee News) and the Assam Tribune published localised stories.

The Madrassa Guardian

The Times of India is not very happy with the current state of political opinion in the Guardian(via Coffee House)

In theory, all news reportage in a credible paper should meet the criterion of objectivity. However, in its commentaries and analyses (generally but not always confined to the editorial, or comment, page) the newspaper not only can, but is expected to, express its opinion on political and other matters, and the more cogently and forcefully the better.

says the paper but

however, the separation of what is sometimes called the 'church and the state' in newspaper jargon (i.e. the editorial page and the news pages) sometimes gets blurred.

But

The Guardian,is far to the left of not just the Tories but also of New Labour, the paper's constituency seemingly that of the 'Londonistan' of mullahs and minarets. The Guardian used to be called the Manchester Guardian; today it might well be called, by fans and foes alike, the Madrassa Guardian.

Guardian writer defends its ideological stance

We have just done a presentation as part our journalism issues module examining whether quality newspapers seperate fact and opinion.

I had the Guardian to look at and on the whole gave it a good mark for being a purveyor of fact and balance whilst keeping its comment section distinct.

Its greatest failing was the agenda that it persued on its front page choosing topics that editorially would set the news agenda.

On the same subject,Jackie Ashley, one of its weekly opinion writers asks Are the Guardianistas rats?
She writes that

One of the sharpest commentators in the Times, David Aaronovitch, once of this parish, has had a serious go at his former colleagues today for, in essence, being a crowd of treacherous monkeys. The Guardianistas, he says, once boosted Brown because they were cross about Blair. Now he faces tough choices, instead of trying to explain them, we turn tail and leave him to sink.

and argues that

Ideological purity should be saved for sects. A newspaper should be a conversation, even a daily argument. I have absolutely no idea what the true core view of this one is, except that it is clearly left of centre and vaguely progressive

Zimbabwe and news values

Why has the crisis in Zimbabwe generated so much media coverage in the Uk?

Earlier in the year,the BBC was critised for the amount of resources that it sent to cover the American Primaries.
The argument was that this was the election of the mnost powerful politian in the world,someone whose actions could influence all our lives.

Alistair Burnett muses about the coverage that the BBC is giving to the crisis in Africa.

Given Mr Mugabe's prominence as an independence leader and the catastrophic nature of his country's economic decline in recent years that has led to an inflation rate of 100,000%, an unemployment rate estimated to be 80%, and millions of people leaving the country in search of work, the story merits coverage.

But why doesnt Somalia get the same coverage?Well it's back to news values

Is it because Zimbabwe is a former British colony and most of Somalia was not?

he asks

Is it because Somalia is a very dangerous place to report from?

he asks or is it

Is it because Somalia has been in this state for the best part of 17 years, whereas Zimbabwe was until a few years ago a relatively stable and prosperous country?

They are all viable news values that determine where scarce journalistic resources are deployed.

Give the public want they want

It's that time of year and Peter Wilby takes a look at the past 12 months of the national press in the Guardian this morning.

Under the headline,Don't blame us - it's the readers' fault,Peter asks whether the press are simply providing what the public want

As other stories failed to meet expectations, the year was dominated by a four-year-old child.

says Peter.adding

Almost everything written since then has been based on speculation and, dare I say it, invention. When their inventiveness dried up, the papers fell back on asking themselves why they were so interested in the case - "commentary on the commentary", as Matthew Parris called it in the Times last week.

Until taken over by the missing canoeist that is.

Not just about the square banana

One of the few occassions when the British Press covers hard news from abroad aopart from famine,disasters and war is in its covergae of the EU.

That was the opening gambit of our international journalism lecture this morning.

Why is this the case.Well the press can point to the economic argument whereby there is a market for it.People are anti EU and thus want to hear about the sleaze and the beaurocracy.Certainly some of it is business led,no more so that Murdoch who feels threatened by the organisations zeal for the free market.

The stories also exhibit some of the dominant news values such as negativity,sleaze and scandal.

Should we care?Possibly we should.Whatever we think about the EU ,it does have an enormous influence over our lives.Employment law and agriculture are tow such areas that influence the way we live.

Theefore the press surely have a responsibilty to report and accurately reflect what is going on in the cooridors of Brussels.People are entitled to this information on the basis of the democratic process

Thomas Aquinas sets the news values

Try telling this to the Daily Express


Interesting perceptive of the Maddy case from across the Atlantic as Steve Borris tells us that

here is the historical checklist for a popular tragedy:
1) a woman or child as a victim or suspect;
2) a physically attractive victim or suspect;
3) a highborn or well-known victim or suspect;
4) some doubt about the guilt of the suspect; and
5) intimations of promiscuous or irresponsible behavior by the victim or suspect.

But perhaps we have to go back to the 13th Century to understand where those values come from

Understanding the public’s all-too-human interest in these tragedies might be less of a job for a scientist than a 13th century theologian like Thomas Aquinas. Among the 7 deadly sins he categorized, these popular tragedies appeal to most of them — envy, pride, greed, and lust. Beyond providing us with lust-provoking things to watch and think about, our greed makes us envy those of wealth or prominence, whose troubled lives restore our pride that our own, less glamorous lives are acceptable. When mainstream news tries to avoid stories that are sensational and titillating, they are fighting against their own customers’ human naturerom

Are papers fed up with the Iraq war?

Nice little piece that I have just read in the New Statesman this week by Brian Cathcart.

The news values that newspapers now have to adhere to, seem to have move the continuing story from Iraq from our papers. Brian describes the likely scenario at the editors conference.

Visualise the morning news conference at a daily paper, where, once again, the foreign editor informs his colleagues that there has been a heavy death toll inside Iraq. Somebody will pipe up: "Any Brits?" The answer will be no. Someone else will ask: "Is this a new peak?" The answer will again be no, since deaths are actually down from last year. And the discussion will swiftly move on to Hillary Clinton or the EU treaty or whatever is next on the foreign list.

The relevance of Galtung and Ruge

We are studying International Journalism currently in Semester One.

One of the topics is what governs the news values that drive the International Agenda.

Most criteria refer back to Galtung and Ruge's 1965 study which lists 12 values including

1.Frequency
2.Threshold
3.Unambiguity
4.Meaningfulness
5.Consonance
6.Unexpectedness
7.Continuity
8.Reference to unique nations
9.Reference to elite people
10.Composition
11.Personalisation
12.Negativity

How relevant a 40 year old study in an age when the multiplicity of media is so much greater is hard to ascertain

In 2003,Ethan Zuckerman looked at the coverage across the internet when Ethnic violence flared up in Congo and over 1000 people were killed in a single incident in a conflict that was estimated to have cost the lives of over 3 million people.

The events went almost unreported.Getting a brief mention in the New York Times.On the same day its front page was reporting Iraq and across the Web this topic had 550,000 mentions as opposed to the Congo which had 1200 in the month.

Gultang and Rouge could have predicted the results Zucherman argues saying that the event fit a number of criteria,that DRC is a non elite nation,its people are non elite,its culture is different from the West,and had little meaning for American readers and it was ongoing so more casualties could be expected.

The internet gives so much more opportunity to gather news data but other factors can come into play.In this situation,communication difficulties in an area of the world decimated by years of war have to come into play.

And perhaps another major factor was that the Iraq war was about to start and was using many available journalistic sources.

Zuchermann comes up with economic factors as being a major driver of news values.

When studying not only news sites but also weblogs where you may expect the proliferation of sources to involve wider topics,this was simply not the case.

In a telling part of the report,the author asks the question "does it matter".In the case of the Congolese it does because greater publicity means that Western governments become more aware and public outcry can force governments to intervene

Machin and Niblock last year questioned the values in today's media world

Machin and Niblock ask working journalists to reflect on their choices and find that the selection and presentation of news stories is increasingly influenced not by values inherent to the story but by the fast-paced nature of the newsroom and target audience

Others have suggested other criteria that drive those values.Gans suggests that as far as domestic stories are concerned,they can be valued by their

1.rank in government or other hierarchies
2.their impact on the nation and national interests.
3.Their impact on people
4.their significance for the past and the future

Other criteria have been identified as having a bearing have been,significance,drama surprise,sex,scandal and crime.

It was five years previously that Tony Harcup and Deirdre O'Neill tested the news values of the British press.The paper points out the shortcomings of the study,that it ignored day to day coverage of lesser events,and that their list of factors excluded those of the visual variety.More importantly certain stories get a lot of coverage without fitting any of their categories.

Harcup and O'Neill looked at 1276 articles that appeared in the British national press in March 1999 using the Telegraph,the Sun and the Mail.They claimed that unlike Galtung and Ruge thy tackled the assignment from the opposite perspective,that it had already been published so how was it chosen.They then attempted to fit the stories into the twelve categories.

It was interesting that since 1965,other criteria had appeared,being entertainment(,reference to picture opportunities,sex,animals,showbiz and TV and humour)and more tellingly campaigns promotions and agendas.

They concluded that the Galtung and Ruge factors no longer covered the majority of stories and came up with their 10 criteria

1.The power elite
2.Celebrity
3.Entertainment
4.Surprise
5.Bad news
6.Good news
7.Magnitude
8.Relevance
9.Follow up
10.The agenda of the newspaper